


Darkness By Day

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [94]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5826961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An anomaly opens on a London common and the team have to find a missing woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The sound of a book being thrown across the office and skidding out into the corridor brought an amused smile to Stephen’s face.

If Cutter didn’t like something, his literary criticism was usually short, sharp and to the point, with book-throwing generally reserved for things that had really got on his nerves. Whatever it was clearly hadn’t gone down well.

“Popularist bollocks!” Cutter pronounced loudly.

“Misuse of government property, Cutter!” Lester remarked as he passed the open doorway, stepping over the book that had aroused the irascible professor’s ire. “I’m sure I saw an expense claim for that item last week.”

“Recoup your loss and use it as bog-paper,” Cutter suggested. “That’s all it’s fit for.”

Lester looked down and raised an elegant eyebrow at the sight of the title. “Dino Gangs? Do I take it we can now expect to see our friends from the past wearing hoodies and thundering around on skateboards whilst tanked up on extra-strength lager? How very tiresome.”

“There were a lot of the buggers in the Forest of Dean that time at the hotel,” Stephen commented, more because he enjoyed getting a rise out of Cutter rather than any particular desire to defend the theory that tyrannosaurids hunted in packs.

“There were several of them in the same place. That doesn’t mean they were hunting as a pack.”

“Hard to tell,” Stephen acknowledged. “We were a tad occupied with staying alive at the time.” And one of Ryan’s lads hadn’t succeeded, but as Cutter hadn’t been there that night, the memories didn’t hold quite the same resonance for him.

The thought of the giant predators roaming the darkened forest still brought a shiver to Stephen’s spine. He’d used a rocket launcher for the first time in his life to take down one that had been advancing on Ryan. The missile had made a hell of a mess at close range, but had stopped the creature in its tracks, which had been all that had mattered at the time.

“Currie’s a bloody media-whore,” Cutter snorted, passing judgment on one of the book’s authors with a predictable sneer. It was certainly true that no one could ever accuse Cutter of pandering to journalists of any sort. When they’d been full-time at CMU, Stephen had dreaded the rare occasions when Cutter had been wheeled out to provide the press with a quote on some new discovery or other. His remarks invariably caused the reporters huge amusement and sent everyone else scurrying for cover – or their lawyers.

“An academic who talks in a civil manner to the press, heaven forefend,” Lester said, executing an Olympic-standard eye roll. “Don’t forget you owe me a report on your latest escapades, Cutter. It’s high time I heard your side of the story. After all, Miss Brown has spent the last three days fending off the Daily Vile. Was it really necessary to throw one of their reporters into a duck pond?”

“He slipped!”

“Not according to their legal department. Now do try to earn your vastly over-inflated salary. I don’t recall literary criticism being part of your job description.”

“That’s not literature, that’s…”

“More report-writing, less chuntering!” Lester instructed, as he waved an imperious hand and continued on down the corridor.

Stephen gave up any attempt to keep a straight face. Cutter in an academic strop was invariably unintentionally hilarious and he knew that this particular one would run and run, a bit like one of the SF guys after a bad Friday night curry. Cutter had disliked Canadian palaeontologist Phil Currie since they’d ended up going head to head at a conference several years ago. They were both bloody-minded, sure of themselves and took no prisoners in a debate, so it had ended up more like a gladiatorial contest than two academics talking at the bar. Currie was widely believed to have been one of the models for Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park films, another of Cutter’s pet bête noirs, which only added fuel to the rants he was capable of delivering given half a chance.

Retrieving the book from the corridor before it became a trip hazard, Stephen put it safely out of reach on a shelf and wondered how he was going to manage to divert Cutter back to the report he was meant to be writing. Coffee and chocolate biscuits helped, but by the time the team retired to the pub for the traditional Friday night drink, Cutter was back in the role of book critic, treating anyone who didn’t manage to escape his clutches quickly enough to a scathing commentary on why accumulations of dinosaur bones weren’t evidence for the fact that they’d lived and hunted together. In Cutter’s view, a large quantity of bone was more likely to contain elements of animals that had died at different times or had simply been brought together in death in unusual circumstances. He steadfastly refused to accept that the tyrannosaurids had hunted in packs, despite claims to the contrary.

“What about the tracks from Alberta?” said Lyle, breaking off a somewhat one-sided darts match with Blade to add some fuel to the fire.

“I’m going to kill Jon,” Ryan muttered in Stephen’s ear.

“You’ve been reading books again, boss!” Finn said to Lyle, with a wide grin.

“Only ones with pictures in,” Lester said, handing Lyle another pint. “Please don’t encourage him, muffin. You might have had the pleasure of getting some healthy exercise on Hampstead Heath today but I’ve had the dubious pleasure of being cooped up in the same building as the irascible academic for the last 10 hours and I’m still no nearer to extracting a report from him than I was at 8am.”

Cutter glared at the pair of them. “There are sod-all tyrannosaur trackways, and the ones that do exist are solitary.”

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence,” Lyle intoned, mischief dancing in his eyes. He’d had to sit through numerous lectures on dinosaur behaviour since the early days of the anomaly project, and the lieutenant had a fly-trap memory for facts of all kinds. His scores at Trivial Pursuit were legendary.

“Another white wine, Claudia?” Stephen said quickly, looking for any excuse to escape. With Cutter in rant-mode and Lyle playing him like a fish, there was only so much dinosaur-related debate that Stephen could take in a day, and if Claudia was going to be saddled with Cutter for the rest of the night, she’d need to be suitably tanked up.

She smiled at him gratefully and they formed a breakaway group at the bar, leaving Lyle to continue Cutter-baiting, with Finn as an appreciative audience and Ditzy on hand in case Blade decided to put everyone out of his misery by the judicious application of six inches of cold steel to the protagonists.

Eventually, Lester succeeded in prising Lyle away from Cutter-baiting with the inducement of a curry in the place around the corner and the rest of the evening passed relatively uneventfully.

“Has he always been like that?” Ryan asked, back at their flat, as he stripped with customary efficiency, balling up his clothes and lobbing them with consistent accuracy into the laundry basket.

“Cutter? The phrase leopards don’t change their spots was probably coined for him,” Stephen admitted. “And he does have a nasty habit of bearing grudges.” Which was one reason why some secrets were better left buried, Stephen thought, as he deposited his clothes on top of Ryan’s.

“So I noticed.” Ryan sprawled out on the bed and didn’t object when Stephen pillowed his head on his lover’s shoulder, despite the fact that the night was still overly warm for comfort, and draped an arm around his waist. “It must be frustrating for him, though,” Ryan added. “Knowing all that stuff and not being able to publish it.”

As ever, Ryan had cut to the heart of the matter. The handful of papers Cutter had been able to publish since the start of the anomaly project had been nowhere near enough to satisfy him. The professor might hate writing reports with a passion, but with a paper buzzing around in his head, he was like a dog with a bone, determined to finish it. Some of the things they’d discovered had, with careful reference to the existing fossil record, been able to make it into print, but not until Lester had been all over any draft paper like a rash. The man’s knowledge of palaeontology was growing at an alarming rate and he was more than capable now of catching Cutter out in any assertion made based on observation rather than hard evidence.

But the need for secrecy was part of the job, whether any of them liked it or not.

Stephen tightened his arm around Ryan’s waist and closed his eyes, trying not to think too hard about his own secrets.

* * * * *

The sound of his phone and Ryan’s going off simultaneously never failed to send a jolt of adrenaline through Stephen’s system.

They were stuck in traffic, no more than five minutes away from the ARC, and before Stephen had even freed his phone from his pocket, Ryan had turned on the blue flashing lights on the black Range Rover.

All anomaly project vehicles driven by members of the special forces contingent were now fitted with such lights and from the moment Ryan activated them, they were classed as an emergency vehicle attending a national security emergency. Their exemptions from traffic regulations were strictly limited, but the main value of the lights was in enabling them to forge a faster path through traffic, as generally other drivers would do their best to allow them free passage.

As long as they hadn’t just received a call asking them to pick up bacon rolls or cakes on the way into the office, no one was going to examine Ryan’s driving too closely, provided he didn’t actually hit anyone or anything.

“Anomaly alert,” Connor said succinctly as Stephen picked up the call. “Where are you?”

“Thirty seconds away from the main gates,” Stephen told him.

“We’ll have your kit ready in the garage.”

Connor was as good as his word, as ever. As soon as Ryan came to a halt in the cavernous internal garage, Lyle opened the rear doors and started chucking the boxes containing their gear into the back while one of the control room technicians gave Stephen the details to enter into the vehicle’s sat nav. Within two minutes of their arrival, they were tearing down the ramp in convoy, heading for Mitcham Common, South London.

According to Lyle, who’d thrown his own kit in with theirs, it had been touch and go whether to call in the helicopter that was now on standby to ferry the team to remote locations, but the time taken to get it to the ARC and then to the anomaly site wouldn’t have given them that much of an advantage, and the benefits of having vehicles on site had outweighed other considerations.

To Stephen’s surprise, they made better than expected time around the M25, and the blue flashing lights stood them in good stead as the passed New Malden and Mitcham itself at speed. A police cordon had been established in the area on Lester’s instructions, with Claudia, who’d been in the car with Cutter, acting as liaison with a harassed DI who, in his own words: didn’t appreciate being asked to do his job with both arms tied behind his back, whilst being kept in the dark and fed shit. The mixed metaphors were delivered over their in-car comms unit, the slight crackle doing nothing to disguise the barely-contained anger in the man’s voice.

Claudia had encountered DI Jamie Cross once before, when she’d had to convince him that a Surrey stockbroker hadn’t been responsible for disembowelling his wife in the garden of their home, whilst not offering any useful information other than judicious and frequent use of the words ‘animal attack’ and ‘national security interests’, a combination that had not gone down particularly well with either Cross or his superiors, but at least an innocent man hadn’t ended up behind bars for very long.

The DI was standing by the roadside, a look of thunder on his face as he watched the ARC convoy pull up. He looked to be in his mid-30s, no more than average height, with short, spiky brown hair. He was wearing a scruffy leather jacket and a pair of jeans that had seen better days. He clearly wasn’t a man who believed in dressing up for the job.

Ryan stuck out his hand. “Captain Tom Ryan, UK special forces. You know Miss Brown. This is Professor Nick Cutter, a Home Office consultant. Professor Cutter and his team are in operational control. It’s the job of me and my men to make sure no one gets hurt.”

It seemed like the policeman was intending to ignore Ryan’s proffered handshake for a moment but then he thought better of it, gripped the outstretched hand for a moment and nodded his acknowledgment of Ryan’s introduction. “DI Jamie Cross. Yes, Miss Brown and I have met. There’s another unspecified dangerous animal on the loose, I presume?” he said, addressing his question to Claudia.

“I sincerely hope not,” she replied. “But until we can confirm that, I need to maintain an exclusion zone around the common while we investigate.”

“While you check out the thing that looks like a laser mini-light show, you mean?” he snapped.

Connor, a hand-held anomaly detector in his hand pointed away from the road to a stand of trees about half a mile away across one of the more open areas of the common that they’d passed to reach this spot. “It’s amongst that lot.”

DI Cross gave Connor a sharp look. “Yes, it is.” To Claudia, he said, “I don’t have the resources to keep people away from the whole common. We’ve already caused traffic chaos by blockading this stretch of road.”

Before Claudia had time to reply, a short, stocky woman with bright red hair hurried over to them, an Airwave radio set in her hand. “Guv, we’ve got a missing person to worry about. A walker was meant to have been home an hour ago. Her mother’s been on the phone to the local station asking them to keep a look out for her. She says she’s on her way up here, but I’ve told them to keep her back behind the cordon.”

Cross’ eyes narrowed in thought. “An hour’s not long. Why the big panic?”

“She’s blind, guv,” the woman told him.


	2. Chapter 2

Stephen stared down at the soft ground around the anomaly. There had been little, if any, rain over the past week, and on their walk from the road he’d noticed that the ground had mostly been dry and hard. There was no surface water in the immediate vicinity, although there was some marked on the map Lyle had pulled up on his GPS unit, but it was out of sight behind one of the many tangles of trees and undergrowth liberally scattered across the common.

“The water’s coming through from the anomaly,” Stephen said, going down on one knee and touching his fingertips to the water. It tasted slightly brackish, definitely not full salt, but not completely fresh, either. “My guess is it’s estuarine water. Drinkable before the tide comes in too far, so we can expect to find creatures in the vicinity on the other side.”

Ryan and his men listened but made no comment.

There were no discernibly recent tracks heading into the anomaly and, comfortingly, no sign of any having left it. Stephen signalled to the others to keep their distance, and walked in ever-widening circles out from the anomaly until he was satisfied he hadn’t missed anything. Unless something had flown through the anomaly, Stephen was reasonably confident that they weren’t going to have to chase any unwelcome visitors across the common.

Beyond that, it was hard to say whether the missing woman had gone through the anomaly or not, and there was going to be only one way to check that.

Cutter, anticipating what Stephen was going to say, ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in even more pronounced spikes that DI Cross’s. “Are you sure?”

Stephen shrugged. “The ground’s too hard for me to be sure of anything, but she’s missing, and unless she’s turned up by now, we’re going to have to take a look on the other side.” He jerked his head in the direction of where the detective inspector was pacing by the side of the road, a phone clamped to his ear. “Let’s see what he’s got to tell us.”

Cutter nodded and strode off back in the direction of the road, with Ryan at his heels. Leaving Lyle to organise the perimeter guard and Connor taking readings, assisted by Abby, Stephen followed the two men. He needed to know more about who he was potentially looking for.

“Her name’s Cathy Fletcher,” the red-haired female detective sergeant told them, without the need to consult her notebook. She’s 27, and lives half a mile away. She’s been blind from birth and has lived here all her life. According to her mother, she knows the common like the back of her hand and walks here every day. She carries a mobile phone and if she’s late for any reason, she’ll always phone. She’s sensible, calm under pressure and considerate of others. And before you ask, not all of that came from her mother. I’ve spoken to her boss at the call centre where she works as well.”

“She’s also now an hour and 20 minutes late,” DI Cross said. “She doesn’t sound to me like the sort of woman to put her mother through the wringer like this without a very good reason.” He fixed Cutter with a level stare. “Are you going to tell me what the fuck’s going on, or are you going to continue with the mushroom treatment?”

“That’s Claudia’s department, not mine,” Cutter said, equally coolly. He turned and headed back to the anomaly, oblivious to the hard stare being directed at the back of his old green army jacket.

Stephen shot the irate policeman an apologetic stare and started off after Cutter, with Ryan at his side. “We go through?” he asked.

“Looks like it,” Ryan acknowledged. “As long as the boy wonder says it looks like staying stable.”

Connor’s verdict was favourable, despite all the usual caveats. In a matter of minutes, the team had divided up into two. Connor would remain behind to monitor the anomaly, with Abby as back-up in case it turned out that any creature had come through after all. Ditzy, Kermit, Fiver, and four others would remain behind to maintain the perimeter, whilst Cutter and Stephen, shadowed by Ryan, Lyle, Blade and Finn would go through the anomaly.

They promptly fell back on a well-oiled drill. Ryan and Lyle went through first, closely followed by Blade and Finn. Stephen and Cutter counted down from 60 in their heads and then stepped through.

Stephen felt the familiar prickle of static raising the hairs on his body and the tug of the magnetism on anything metal he was carrying, including the M4 carbine slung across his body. Their weaponry had caused DI Cross to raise his eyebrows, but they’d left Claudia to deal with that.

The sudden softness of the ground under his feet almost caused Stephen to stumble, as did the glare of the sun, in contrast to the cloudy day they’d left behind in south London. Stephen blinked in reaction, holding the rifle firmly clamped against his chest, as he scanned the area for any immediate threats.

As water seeped into his boots, Stephen’s eyes took in a wide sweep of mud flats, fringed with conifers and an impressive array of ferns set back from the water’s edge. Ahead lay a seemingly endless expanse of white-topped waves breaking on a sandy shore over which birds – no, on closer inspection, pterosaurs – wheeled in the air. From what Stephen could see, they were no later than the Cretaceous.

While Ryan and the others scanned the area for signs of the woman they hoped to find, Stephen’s eyes went immediately to the ground beneath his feet, looking for her footprints. The soldiers had fanned out but then maintained position so as not to disturb any tracks.

The tide was incoming, lapping gently around Stephen’s ankles. It had already obliterated any prints in the immediate vicinity and would soon be sending more water through the coruscating ball of light as it flickered and pulsated behind them. Stephen didn’t envy Claudia’s attempts to explain the sudden disappearance of half of the team and a large ingress of water to the cynical copper watching from the sidelines.

Stephen quickly realised that the anomaly response team wasn’t the only living presence in the area. To their left, a herd of large titanosaurids was grazing peacefully by the riverside, their long necks enabling them to pluck leaves from the tops of the trees. On the other side of the river, Stephen could see several iguanodons and a solitary ankylosaur. All herbivores. So far, so good. He was too old a hand at this game to make the mistake of thinking that just because they didn’t eat meat didn’t mean they were safe, but at least it meant that the team didn’t have to be immediately concerned about something fancying a homo sapiens sapiens flavoured snack to vary their diet. They just had to make sure they didn’t get trampled, and that was something the team had had a fair bit of practice in.

Abby’s lectures on animal behaviour would have been well-attended even if they hadn’t been compulsory. She spoke well, with a nice combination of humour and authority. The soldiers knew not to get between youngsters and the rest of the herd, how to get an idea of wind direction and speed when approaching so that you had a good idea when your scent would arrive ahead of you, keeping within their line of sight if you had to make a direct approach, and what signs of disturbance to look out for in a herd.

Stephen was already running through a mental checklist based on her lessons. The wind was blowing towards the anomaly; there were young animals in sight, but they were all tucked in amongst the main herd, with no stragglers. A couple of the Iguanodons had caught sight of them but were exhibiting no signs of concern.

As soon as he’d checked out the area for any immediate threats, he turned his attention to the watery ground beneath his feet. The soldiers had fanned out just enough to surround the anomaly, and Cutter had stayed behind him, knowing from past experience how important it was not to ruin any tracks that might be in the vicinity. That training was still uppermost in the team’s mind, even though they were now all ankle-deep in water.

“The tide’s coming in,” Stephen said, knowing he was probably stating the bleedin’ obvious but saying it anyway. He could see where the high-water mark was, and he doubted the anomaly would become impassable, but Mitcham Common was probably going to get a bit damp. “This lot are going to stop drinking shortly. OK, let’s get out of the water, but spread out, stay behind me, and keep an eye out for any footprints in the mud. No yelling.”

Feeling the soft mud of the estuary sinking under his boots, Stephen started to make his way to firmer ground. The sun was high in a cloudless blue sky, unbroken by the almost ever-present aircraft trails of the 21st century, and the air was heavily-laden with heat and humidity. Directly in front of him, Stephen could see a mass of confused tracks by the water’s edge, smaller, three-toed prints of something that night have been a duck-billed dinosaur, maybe a hadrosaur, overlain with larger prints, almost belonging to the enormous titanosaurs, they were possibly alamosaurs, but without Connor’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the past it was impossible to be sure. The creatures had all milled around the edge of the river, getting their fill of fresh water before the tide had started to come in. Having done that, they’d moved back from the mud and started to graze, moving slowly along the edge of the water, staying together, but not seemingly overly concerned by anything.

Stephen was slightly surprised – and very relieved – that none of the animals appeared to have decided to investigate the anomaly, but if he was wrong about that, Abby and Ditzy were more than capable of orchestrating a round-up operation. He quickly tried to put himself into the position of a woman who relied on senses other than sight to navigate by. According to what the red-haired DS had gleaned from Cathy Fletcher’s mother, she knew the common like the back of her hand, using a long white stick as an aide to navigation. She also had particularly acute hearing and an excellent sense of smell, all of which went some way to compensation for the lack of another sense that human beings had come to depend on for so long.

The ground under her feet would have changed abruptly as she passed through the anomaly, and she couldn’t have failed to notice the slight static prickle that everyone experienced during the abrupt transition from the present to the past, and vice versa. The sudden rise in temperature and humidity would no doubt have confused the hell out of the poor woman, as would the rich aroma of river mud, overlain with a distinctive smell of animal dung, not wholly dissimilar from that of a particularly large and pungent cow pat magnified numerous times over.

The sounds were wholly different, as well. The incessant background hum of traffic that most people simply tuned out was gone. In its place was the sound of water gently lapping against the sandy mud, the rumbling bellows from the herd and even the occasional loud fart as an animal voided its bowels, adding to the rich, warm musky smell of the alamosaurs carried to them by a light breeze. There was no bird song, but some small microraptors were gliding amongst the tree tops, cawing harshly. Even with the prevalence of parakeets in and around London’s green spaces, you wouldn’t mistake the noises Stephen was hearing for anything you’d expect to hear on Mitcham Common. The thought crossed his mind that they were lucky the airborne creatures seemed to be confining their activities to the tree line.

“Stephen, over here!” Ryan’s voice was low, but urgent.

Staying just on the edge of the water, Stephen quickly made his way to Ryan, who was about four metres upwind of him, closer to the herd.

Ryan pointed at an area of disturbed silt. Amidst a profusion of confused and barely differentiable tracks was one clear print. A human handprint, palm down, at least two centimetres deep, as though she’d fallen, with one hand out to brace herself. Nearby was a dished indentation, deeper at one end than the other, with a ragged mark in its concave surface. Unless Stephen was very much mistaken, it was the imprint of a knee.

Stephen couldn’t stifle a sharp intake of breath.

Cathy Fletcher had definitely come through the anomaly and from what he’d just seen she’d been wearing a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee.

Now all they had to do was find her.


	3. Chapter 3

“Stephen!” Blade’s voice was low and urgent, and held something approaching unease.

Despite not wanting to see what could have caused the normally imperturbable soldier to sound like that, Stephen turned his head and looked back towards the anomaly. The river snaked around and through it and away into the distance, with trees and tall ferns coming close to the water in places. Beyond their immediate environment, he could see a mountain range rising up out of the forest, its upper slopes grey and bare. But it was what he could see a great deal closer that had caused Blade’s unease.

The branches of the trees some 500 metres away were swaying and Stephen caught a glimpse of a huge, grey-green shape moving slowly amongst the ferns and leaves. An almost impossibly large head shot out aggressively from amongst the foliage, huge jaws agape. The body that followed dwarfed all the other creatures in sight. Almost comically small forearms stuck out from a deep, slightly paler chest, but Stephen didn’t feel much like laughing, not when he was staring at one of the most feared predators ever to have walked the earth.

It wasn’t the first time any of them had gone up against a T. rex, but that wasn’t much comfort.

“Why have I never got a fucking rocket launcher when I want one?” Lyle muttered.

“Because you’re never a good boy at Christmas, boss?” Finn hazarded.

“We need to get to the trees,” Stephen said. “Walk, don’t run. There’s hopefully enough ordinary prey around without it having to concern itself with us. Get there then cover me as best you can. I need to see if I can pick up Cathy’s tracks.”

“You need to get out of here like the rest of us,” Cutter said quietly but forcefully.

“I need to find her trail,” Stephen repeated. “I’ll be all right. It’s not taking any notice of us.”

“Do as Stephen says!” Ryan ordered.

Knowing better than to argue with their captain in the field, the soldiers moved slowly but steadily across the harder mud at the edge of the river, their boots no longer sinking as much as they had been at the water’s edge. Stephen knew he couldn’t stay in the open for long, but he was determined to find the woman’s trail, even though the idea of being under of scrutiny by an apex predator as tall as a double-decker bus had gone straight to his bladder, making him regret that last mug of coffee before leaving the flat that morning.

Stephen had utter faith in the fact that Ryan and the other soldiers would be both his eyes and his ears as he bent his head to the task of staring at the confused mass of prints in the soft ground. He picked out another couple of partial handprints and another one from a knee, this time without the rip in the jeans, then she’d clearly found her feet. He could see a clear imprint left by a size 6 trainer, then another couple partially obliterated by the three-toed impressions left by the Iguanodons.

“Cathy!” he called, throwing caution to the winds, and hoping she hadn’t gone too far into clearly unfamiliar territory. “Cathy, we’re here to take you home!”

A sharp intake of breath told him that Ryan didn’t approve of him raising his voice like that, but Stephen was banking on the fact that the constant stream of noises from the nearby herd would serve as a distraction for the T. rex and cover any noises he made with an overlay of familiar sounds. But to a woman, alone and almost certainly terrified, the sound of another human voice would hold a far greater significance.

“Cathy!” he tried again, still moving towards the lush vegetation now no more than 20 metres away.

The others, moving faster, had already reached cover and had spaced themselves out, making sure to stay between him and the giant predator. The T.rex was snuffling the air, its small dark eyes seeking out prey. It took a long stride out into the open, the light breeze carrying the scent of the as yet oblivious herd of alamosaurs to it without in turn alerting them to the danger that was now stalking them.

“Cathy! My name is Stephen Hart, I’ve come to take you home!”

“Over here!” Her answering voice took him by surprise.

Stephen searched the edge of the trees for her hiding place. A flash of white alerted him to a figure huddled beneath a large, overhanging fern. A muddy hand came out and waved, then was retracted like a turtle snapping its head back into the safety of its shell.

“I see you!” he told her. “Ryan, with me!”

“There’s a second one.” Lyle’s voice was as calm as someone ordering a takeaway pizza.

“Wucking funderful,” Finn commented. “If we’re lucky, they might just shag. The last ones we saw shagged.”

“They both look pretty butch to me,” Lyle said.

“So do you, but you shag a bloke.”

“Aren’t the females smaller?”

“There’s no hard evidence to back up any theories of sexual dimorphism,” Cutter interjected.

Despite his situation, Stephen couldn’t stop himself grinning. This lot would argue until the cows came home, given half a chance, even with a fucking tyrannosaurus or two bearing down on them.

“Whoever said three was a lucky number was talking cock,” Blade said in a tone of deep disgust.

Ignoring what was going on behind him, Stephen kept moving towards where Cathy Fletcher was hidden. “I’m coming,” he told her. “Just stay exactly where you are. I can see you.”

He reached her without any shots needing to be fired, which was a distinct bonus. She was crouched at the base of a large fern, her back against the woody stem, arms wrapped around her muddy knees. She had short blonde hair, framing a face that was striking rather than conventionally pretty, a wide mouth that looked well-suited to laughter, and a smattering of freckles on a suntanned face. Her clothes were wet and liberally coated in mud. She was wearing what had once been a white cotton top and a pair of skinny leg jeans, and there was indeed a rip in the left knee.

“Are you injured?” he asked quickly as soon as he reached her side.

“My ankle hurts, but I don’t think it’s broken. Where the hell am I?” she demanded, turning to face him.

Her eyes were pale blue and had an unfocussed look. She reached up a filthy hand to brush some strands of hair off her forehead smearing the muck on her face even more.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here,” Stephen said, hating the fact that he couldn’t tell her the truth.

“I’m blind, not stupid!” she snapped. “This isn’t Mitcham Common. I was nowhere near Seven Islands Pond when I fell in the water, the animals that nearly trampled on me sure as hell weren’t cows and I very much doubt that you’re Doctor Who, so try telling me what’s really going on. I very much doubt it’ll be as crazy as anything I’m imagining, so stop being a dick and just tell me the bloody truth.”

Stephen laughed, despite the fact that a third tyrannosaur had apparently come to join the party, according to the running commentary that Blade was keeping up over the radio for his benefit and Ryan’s. “Well, I am a doctor, but it’s only a PhD not a medical degree, and I’ve never set foot in the TARDIS in my life, despite a friend attempting to drag me to the exhibition in Cardiff.”

“Stop fucking stalling,” she said, sounding uncannily like Ryan in a bad temper. “Whatever’s just come out of the trees has got you and the bloke talking to you on the radio shit-scared and I want to know what it is. And who else is with you? I can hear someone breathing, but you haven’t told me who they are.”

“Sorry, “Stephen said. “The person with me is Captain Tom Ryan. The thing that’s just come out of the trees is a tyrannosaurus rex,” Stephen said. “There are three of them now. You’re in the Cretaceous, that’s around 66 million years ago…”

“I know when the Cretaceous was,” she snapped. “What I don’t know was how I got here.”

“You were unlucky enough to walk through a rip in time.”

The sound of a very loud bellow tore through the air with ear-splitting force. The alamosaurus herd promptly closed up around the juveniles and started to move away, down river, towards the estuary. Not panicked yet, but not far from it.

“You’re not fucking joking, are you?” Cathy said, with something approaching awe in the voice.

“My life would be a lot simpler if I was,” he conceded. “Can you walk, or do we need to carry you?”

“I might need some help, but I don’t think I need to be carried.”

“No one move!” Cutter ordered over the radio. “They’re starting to take an interest in the alamosaurs.”

“Prof’s right,” Lyle commented. “Looks like it’s about to be feeding time at the zoo. If that lot over there provide a nice hot meal, we can make a run back to the anomaly. I don’t want to worry anyone, but it’s not looking as bright as it was when we cam through.”

“Way to go not to worry anyone, Jon,” Ryan muttered. “Professor, what do you think?”

“Lyle’s right on both counts, but if Connor was seriously worried, he would have sent someone through. That means we should be good for at least the next half hour.”

“What’s happening?” Cathy Fletcher demanded. “I can hear the other animals, the smaller ones, getting agitated.”

“T. rexes are enough to get most things agitated,” Stephen said, leaning out slightly from the shadow of the giant fern to see what was happening. “They’re looking towards the herd… they’re definitely interested and the alamosaurs know it.”

She reached out and gripped his hand, squeezing it hard. “Tell me what you can see. It’s less scary if I know what’s going on. I won’t get hysterical and I won’t do anything stupid, I promise. Just don’t keep me in the dark.”

Stephen squeezed her hand back, wondering how the hell she was managing to keep her composure after all she’d experienced since the moment she’d stepped through the anomaly, everything familiar ripped away from her in an instant. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to be alone in an unfamiliar world, permanently in the dark.

One of the giant predators took another step forward and let out another bone-rattling roar.

“It’s doing that to spook the herd into running and get them to break into smaller groups and start moving. There’s a theory that says their eyesight isn’t that great but that they’re good at picking up motion. We don’t know if it’s true and I don’t want to have to find out the hard way.”

“Always thought Jurassic Park was crap. They couldn’t even get the bloody title right.”

Stephen grinned. She was going to get on well with Connor. He might claim it was one of his favourite films, but that didn’t stop him keeping up a running critique the whole bloody way through. Watching all three, back to back, in the same room as both Connor and Cutter was not an experience he was in any hurry to repeat.

“OK, it’s all about to kick off… the herd are about to run. They’re milling around, trying to get the juveniles into the middle but they know there’s no safety in numbers up against one of these guys.”

The alamosaurs abruptly took off at a run. They were surprisingly fast, despite their vast bulk, but the T. rex were huge and had a long stride, even though they were slower off the starting blocks. Feeling a bit like a commentator at a horse race, Stephen started to describe exactly what he could see.

One of the alamosaurs was slower than the others, lurching as it ran, possibly from an old injury. You didn’t have to be David Attenborough to work out what was about to happen next.

As the T. rex came thundering past their hiding place, slowed down slightly by the soft ground, Stephen found himself holding his breath, the commentary dying on his lips as he squeezed Cathy’s hand, hoping the gesture would be of some reassurance. At his side, Ryan had his M4 carbine braced on one knee. It would do fuck-all good if the super-sized predators turned on them, but despite the fear the creatures invoked in him, Stephen was reasonably confident they were unlikely to be noticed. Even so, the sodding things weren’t doing anything for his bladder control.

“They’re past us,” he breathed, letting out a long, slow breath.

“I know. I’m blind, not deaf.” She turned to him, the ghost of a grin on her muddy face. “And before you say it, I have a practically inexhaustible stock of ‘I’m blind not…’ lines. They come up a lot if you’re me.”

“I doubt many people make the same mistake twice, Miss,” Ryan commented. “Give it a minute and we should be able to make a dash for it. Those buggers are about to be otherwise occupied.”

Stephen watched as the three tyrannosaurs thundered down the riverside. The hindmost alamosaur turned towards the river, surprisingly nimble, lumbering into the shallow water. The three predators turned in step, all intent on running down the same prey, the rest of the herd forgotten as they all focussed on the one animal. Despite their size, the three of them moved like shoaling fish, keeping pace with each other, not barging or fouling, just three perfect killing machines acting as one.

The alamosaur didn’t stand a chance, and its enormous mass would be no defence against the tyrannosaurs. As they closed on it, Stephen stood up, hauling Cathy to her feet and looping her arm over his shoulder so he could support her weight.

“Go!” Ryan ordered. “Lyle, Blade, Finn, cover us while we get Miss Fletcher out of her. Professor, this is no time for taking notes, so don’t even fucking thing about it or you know what’ll happen next!”

“What’s that?” Cathy asked, as she started to limp as fast as she could at Stephen’s side.

“Ryan will clock him over the back of his head with his pistol and carry him home,” Stephen supplied.

“Man after my own heart. I worked for a prof once at Kingston Uni. Spent a lot of time wanting to thump him.”

Their feet started to splash in the water.

“The tide’s come in quite a way since you came through,” Stephen said as they moved deeper into the brown, silty water. “Flowing faster, as well. We might go through with a bit of a bump.”

“Better than staying here,” she panted, pain contorting her face every time her foot took any weight.

The sound of the three tyrannosaurs rending chunks out of their prey wasn’t exactly the nicest note to leave the Cretaceous on, but the unfortunate animal had probably saved their lives. The flowing water tugged at Stephen’s legs as he fought to keep both himself and Cathy upright in the river. Even though the anomaly was definitely dimmer, he could still feel the magnetic pull on the rifle slung over his shoulder. Cathy’s injured ankle started to buckle, but Stephen kept his arm tightly around her waist as he allowed the tide to push them back through the anomaly to the 21st century.

“We’re going through,” he told Cathy. Moments later, they landed in a tangle of arms and legs on Mitcham Common.

Hands reached out and started to help them up as first Cutter, then Lyle piled after them, with the others following in rapid succession. They were all hauled away from the anomaly, as the rest of the team went back to holding the perimeter in case anything decided to follow them through.

The last one to arrive back was Ryan. The captain hit the ground in a roll and then came up on his feet without being help. “They’re still otherwise occupied,” he announced. “They were picking off another straggler as I left.”

Stephen pulled Cathy Fletcher to her feet and kept his arm around her as he felt the reaction start to set in. “You’re OK now,” he said softly. “You were great.”

She sniffed loudly and buried her muddy face in his shoulder for a moment as she started to shake.

Stephen grinned over his shoulder at Cutter, whose hair was standing up in damp spikes.

“That looked like hunting in packs to me, Cutter. Shall I tell Phil Currie, or will you?”

The snort he got in return could probably have been heard in central London.

“Bless you,” muttered Cathy Fletcher, She turned her face away from Stephen’s shoulder and asked, “Would you like to borrow a handkerchief, Professor?”

Behind Cutter’s back, Lyle and Finn promptly high-fived each other.


End file.
